Visiting Cowen

Today I visited the place where I was Saved back when I was a Baptist, Camp Cowen in Cowen, West Virginia. It is a place that holds so many dear memories to me, and the transformation from a mere six or seven years since I had last seen its grounds was both jarring in one sense, but invigorating as well!

It was weird to see the places I once knew had changed, even for the better, or in some cases, there were entirely new things there! The first and most visible change one could see on the drive in until the road blocks, was that of the old campfire circle that was never used, compared to the normal one; it had become the new backup campfire circle with a towering hut like structure with wooden bleachers that stretched up to the ceiling and in the center there was a campfire area already set up. In my day, the backup camp fire area was known as the dining hall, and there was no way there was going to be a fire in there.

That lead to the second thing that I saw that had changed; there was an entirely new dining hall! It turns out that someone I had gone to church with back in my Baptist days had designed it from scratch, and incorporated nothing of the old dining hall in it except a phone booth. Gone are the days of the fast and furious (and occasionally profane) ping pong matches on the dining hall porch and the Bible studies on the porch benches, because there is no true porch space any more!

Instead it's a nearly mammoth structure in comparison to the one which I was so used to. It has high roofs, individual folding chairs at normal looking tables, instead of old and long tables with equally long and unsteady benches that we used to be packed into side by side like sardines on! Mom used to work in the kitchen in the 1970s and she was utterly amazed at all the new stuff they have in there, and how nice the air conditioning is, actual air conditioning in a kitchen at a summer camp!

The third thing that we noticed was different was when my cousin's cell phone rang. In Cowen. If you've been to Camp Cowen, you know what I'm talking about. If not...we didn't even know we could get cell service in the county that Cowen was located in, let alone in Cowen itself! And the reception, while not great, was still pretty decent for the middle of nowhere for about thirty to forty miles in every direction!

So we kept on walking; things really didn't seem to change that much from the way I remember except for little things...well except the new rock climbing wall that was in no way there when I was a camper! The Vespers area has energy efficient lightbulbs and a new little area for people to sit in on what seemed to be rather fresh cut lumber benches as compared to the ones that have been there for decades. The Vespers area also had, except for one, energy efficient light bulbs strung about, which was amazing to me in itself for one reason; that reason wasn't that Camp Cowen would embrace energy efficiency, but rather that the plugs they have hanging about out at the Vespers place would actually support such a new light bulb design!

The camp fire area was one place I thought had stayed the same, but I was proven wrong there as well. There were more new lumber seats there, as compared to the decades old ones and of course the awesome rocks that everyone absolutely loves sitting on around a roaring bonfire!

I really enjoyed seeing the river again as well; when I was a camper we weren't allowed in it, probably for insurance reasons in case one of us was to get hurt, though they did baptisms in it, that was it. Don't be a camper and go in the river. Well I'm not a camper any more, so I waded in a bit to get a feel for the cold water and to watch the most tadpoles I had ever seen. It was nice, even if I was accused of being a bad influence on my cousin's daughter, who wanted to follow "Phulp" in. Fortunately she was happy to only be held above the water's edge and splash her feet a few times before wandering off to do other things, but such is the wonder of childhood I guess. Everything is so much fun and such a mystery to behold!